The new guy

Posted on by
Reply

So, after being ill the other week and having some time off work, i came back to work the other morning to find a new guy opening up instead of the usual person; it turns out he’s the new store manager. After I found this out; I was a bit anxious, thinking to myself “oh no, what if he doesn’t like the way I do things?” and “I hope he doesn’t think I’m doing a bad job!”

I finished later than usual that day. The reason? It seems that the new guy was pretty down to earth. He seemed to treat people he worked with like equals. Sadly, this is rare quality found in anyone who is in a management type role; usually you get treated like a lackey; someone who should jump at every command, and this is not how a business should be managed. For a successful business and happy staff, you need someone who treats you with respect; just as they require it from you.

The thing I found awesome about the new store manager was that he seems more than happy to “get his hands dirty” and do the every day jobs that the normal staff are paid to do; again, this is a very rare quality to see from someone in this type of position.

So, I have to give kudos to this guy, he deserves them!

What a pain in the ass!

Posted on by
Reply

The types of people who annoy me most are the people who blatantly and publicly break rules and or the law, then get away with it. For example; I drove to my local Waitrose after picking the children up from school; the car park was bursting, with maybe three or four spaces available; two of these were: a parent and child space and a disabled drivers space.

There were two people in front of me trying to find a parking space. The first person parked in the parent and child space; they didn’t have any children, realised their “error” and reversed out and went to find another space. The person in front of me also parked in the parent and child space and stayed there. At this point, I didn’t think too much about it and drove off to find a space of my own.

As I walked past the car which had parked in the parent and child space, I noticed two old women getting out; no child in sight. Immediately, a wave of frustration passed over my body. I had to park in a spot where there was no safe walking area for me and the children to walk to the elevator, simply because these two lazy people could not be bothered to find a suitable parking space of their own.

I promptly found the parking attendant and made a complaint. Upon inspection of their car, we discovered that they had a disabled parking badge. This however, does not allow them the privilege of parking in the parent and child parking space. That space, has been allocated specifically for us parents to help keep our children safe while walking to the shop by minimising the journey from the car to the entrance.

What annoyed me the most about this “trivial” situation is the fact that right next to the parent and child space was an empty space for disabled people! As I was not disabled, nor do I hold a disabled badge, I was not entitled to park there. They, like most disabled drivers, in my experience seem to believe that they have the right to park anywhere and at any time that is suitable for them. I’m not saying that “all” disabled drivers are the same, but the few that I have encountered, put them in a bad light, which is probably my reason for why I find them annoying.

Have you or anyone you know had a similar problem with “annoying” people who nick your parking space? I feel I am not alone here!

Do I have it?

Posted on by
Reply

Potential – Having or showing the capacity to develop into something in the future.

Do I have potential? I would certainly like to think so. I’m certainly trying to better myself; I’m currently studying Maths and English at college; I’m developing my skills as a photographer; I have the need and want to learn more, to do more. Does this qualify me as having potential?

I currently feel that I’m stuck in a rut with my job. I feel that I have the potential to do more; to earn more; to further my career. I believe a job change, to something that has more hours, is a start in the right direction. I have taken steps to try and sort my “dead end job” issue; I have applied for several jobs. Sadly I have not had the pleasure of a single response from any of the employers that I applied to. I will however, keep applying. In the interim, I will apply my time and effort to schooling and developing my skills as a photographer.

Have a photo of a Meerkat.

Catching up

Posted on by
Reply

It’s been a while since I last updated, because I really haven’t know what to write. The odd thing is, it’s not as if nothing has been going on either; loads of stuff has happened.

My niece turned two on November 7th. We travelled down to my sisters in Kent, the weekend before her birthday, to spend some time with her and give her the presents that we bought.

While down in Kent, my sister asked me to try and get some photos of her and her new boyfriend, Jake. The entire family ventured out to Leybourne Lake Country Park for the afternoon; it was absolutely freezing! I did however, manage to get a nice shot of them both.

On the Sunday, the slight cold that I had for a couple of days, decided to take a turn for the worse. I started to have hallucinations and ran a really high temperature. One minute I’m boiling, the next I’m freezing cold. It was horrendous. Thankfully, I started to feel better to drive home on the Monday evening. We finally made it home at just gone 1am.

The following week, 14 November, it was Ryan’s birthday; he’s now seven years old. We had a set budget of £200 for his birthday. That £200 would pay for some presents, a trip to the zoo, a movie at the cinema, dinner, a birthday cake and celebrations with his cousins and aunts. for a seven year-old, he does pretty damn well out of us!

A more permanent home

Posted on by
Reply

I decided a while ago that I needed a more permanent home for my photos. I tried something on here; Tumblr and a separate WordPress blog for it. Nothing really worked too well for what I wanted.

I came to the conclusion that Facebook was a good idea. Its nice and easy to manage; I can share my photos easily with my friends and family, and everyone can see my photos; even non-members.

The easiest way to keep up to date with my photos is to like my Facebook page. Click here which will take you to the page, then simply click like!

If you’re up for it, some feedback on my photos would be really appreciated, and by feedback I mean the type that will help me get better at photography, not the type that trolls seem to love to give!

College

Posted on by
Reply

A while back now, I started thinking of my future and I wanted to improve myself in certain areas of my life. One of these areas was going to be academic. Katie and I, enrolled in the local college here in Winchester, called Peter Symonds. We signed up for two classes; Maths and English.

It’s been two weeks since we started. Everything seems to be very basic and not really challenging and I didn’t really expect this, but as I understand it, it’s like this so they can test what level we are at and can then proceed with a customised course to help me improve on the areas that I need it most.

In the long-term, I hope the English course will help me maintain a good level of communication here on my blog, and also help me with my hand writing. It’s atrocious for someone of my age. As for the Maths course, I enrolled in this because I want to be able to help my kids with their homework when they start bringing it home. I don’t want to be one of those parents who doesn’t have a clue and look stupid in front of their kids.

Not only will the courses be good for helping the kids out, it will be something extra to add to my CV ( résumé for the foreigners who read this ). This, then, may or may not help me out when I decided to eventually proceed into a different career.

My new, new car!

Posted on by
Reply

As you may know I won a car back in March of this year. A brand new Fiat 500! By winning that car, it encouraged me to get a driving licence and learn to drive. I achieved my goal on June 13th. Ever since I passed my driving test I have been almost non stop driving about in that little Fiat. Until last Tuesday!

Last Tuesday I approached Ford in Winchester to find out how much my car was worth. To find out if it was viable for me to sell it and get a bigger new car. Ford offered me £6,500 for my Fiat! I was ecstatic when I found that out! After offering me the £6,500 I soon enquired about buying a new car from Ford.

Two and a half hours after walking into Ford, I walked out being the owner of a brand new Ford Focus Zetec 1 Litre 999cc Turbo 125BHP car just sky of £18,000.

I picked her up last Tuesday, with 36 miles on the clock!

Continue reading →

A New View

Posted on by
Reply

If you have been keeping up with me on Facebook or on Twitter, I recently bought myself a new lens for my camera. I have been wanting a new lens for a long time now. Specifically a telephoto lens as I want to be able to capture the kids much better while they are playing with out intruding.

I finally got the go ahead from Katie to buy my new fantastic lens. The Nikon AF-S VR 70-300 f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED. I picked it up from Jessops on the 7th September as they price matched the lens down from £439.99 to £419.99 for me, which was an awesome surprise, as I was going to be spending £421 buying it from Amazon with the next day Saturday delivery, so it ended up being cheaper!

Over the past few weeks I have had a good play with it. It’s extremely heavy compared to what I was used to, but is well worth the aching arm. I have captured some stunning photos of the kids and some wildlife.

Continue reading →

Site downtime

Posted on by
Reply

If you are one of the few who follow my blog, you may have noticed that my website was up and down the past few days. I have finally taken the decision to move my website over to 1&1 because I have been experiencing some issues with my previous host.

The last straw was when they told me that they were updating their servers to run a type of Linux that for some reason WordPress does not like and will not run properly on. It experiences issues with image uploading, and obviously running a blog that is mainly dominated by photos, I can’t have issues with photo uploading.

The good thing I have noticed about changing my hosting over to 1&1 is that any support queries are dealt with, within minutes. My previous host, could sometimes take up to several working days. Any successful business needs to have a very fast response time when dealing with modern technology, especially issues that it experiences. They were simply just not meeting my expectations with support.

Geohashing 27-08-2012

Posted on by
Reply

I do love geohashing. Today I decided that I wanted to go and get myself the sunrise geohash achievement. As Kate and the kids were coming with me, they had to be up at the same time as myself. I’m not sure they were prepared for the time that I said!

4.20am we got up this morning. Got our stuff ready and headed out to Kingsmere to Whitehill viewpoint. I set up the sat-nav to take us to the WhiteHill viewpoint. This was not an easy task and I had to scroll over a map, which looked very different from the one I was looking at on my phone. Once I found where it was that we needed to go we headed off.

Around 30 minutes later we arrived and gathered our bits. The sun is just starting to light up the sky. I checked the GPS on my phone and proceeded in the direction that I thought we had to go. It was a nice 15 – 20 minute walk later that we found ourselves at a gate that I had to climb over. I got over, the kids then climbed over, and then Kate was the only one left. Before she attempted to climb, I noticed that the gate had a latch, and it could be opened. It turned out that no climbing was needed after all!

We proceeded to walk a further 3 – 4 minutes and finally reached the hash point. I took some photos of the sunrise and of us. Unfortunately there was nothing around for us to make a marker to say we had been there. So we just headed on back to the car after around 15 minutes of photo taking.

When I have some free time, I intend to go back there and explore the area some more. It looks amazing and deserves a proper investigation.

Check out the photos below of our geohashing experience!

Continue reading →